Basically, we gave the power to the company without the responsibilities to the humans behind it because there is less consequences, less skin in the game.

Before that, companies had to have everything attached to a human, not the company. So the human was responsible.

You are so used to it that you think it's normal, but it's not.

It's a concept we have created: that companies can act in their own name, like they are actually something concrete.

But when we did that, we failed to give companies expiration date, something like inheritance tax, the equivalent of prison and so forth.

Something that doesn't exist, a concept, enjoy many things a concrete human can do, but won't pay nearly the same consequences.

In fact, it's sometimes in the title: limited liability company. It's by design.

And of course, it allowed humans to do a lot of things without risking to lose all their life if they failed. But we went to far and now, we have companies that can enjoy all those benefits but with much less limitations than the humans counterpart.

It makes them too powerful.

I don't think companies can sign contracts. What is the power of having a bank account and moving funds around? It's still people deciding to do this, and doing it, just under a group name. What power?

> Something that doesn't exist, a concept, enjoy many things a concrete human can do, but won't pay nearly the same consequences

People are still doing it. You seem to have totally mis-framed this. If you say "people can get away with doing things inside a company" you'd have a point, perhaps, but you're talking as though companies are sentient.

It's like a union type: `type Person = Human | Company`. Or like inheritance: `class Human(Person)`, `class Company(Person)`. Or a typeclass/trait/interface...

It allows you to reuse many laws for both humans and companies, without having to specify them or define special cases every time it is mentioned.

We can't punish countries either, even though they can also do these things. We can only punish people. So what?

Same with companies: mostly fines, but also limits on how they can operate, additional oversight...

Of course, the consequences trickle down to people, but these punishments are not meant to target any given individual, and if the individuals in charge change, the ones that leave don't necessarily carry the punishment with them.

This makes sense, legal entities like companies are guided by incentives. And it sometimes makes more sense to punish the legal entity to change its behaviour, by imposing disincentives, rather than punishing whichever people are running it at the time.

For example, people within a company might pressure an individual to commit a crime, because even if that individual might get punished, the company may benefit as a whole. But if the company's (financial) survival is at stake, everyone is more likely to collaborate to prevent that situation, including the shareholders, if the punishments are big enough.

The point here is, that for issues like negligence and fraud, the current punishments are not significant enough to act as a real deterrent. The punishment on the companies is too lenient (they can absorb the fines, they are rarely an existential threat), and the punishment on the individuals responsible is too lenient (difficult to attribute culpability, limited liability...).

We do want to figure out how to hold individuals more accountable, as you said, we are just having a conversation about why it works like that right now and what could be changed to improve it.

We are currently trying to punish entities (with fines), and it's ineffective.

We should move back to punishing people more, and moving back the responsibility to people, instead of pretending companies are people, and therefore responsible.

- Make them more liable.

- Make the people behind them more liable.

- Give companies limitations. What would be the equivalent of jail for a company ? Unable to sale for x years ? How long a company should be able to exist ?

Right now there is way too much power and shielding at the same time.

If they can't sell then they don't have money, and everyone is fired. Is that what you mean? Why are you trying to make companies into physical people who can be punished separately to their employees/shareholders, instead of thinking of the actual outcome you want and coming up with something to achieve that?

Because limited liability means exactly that the owners are shielded to a degree. That‘s my point. That‘s why corporations were created as a concept.

This concept is necessary because the company represents collective decisions and if each and every one of those would be individually accountable then less business would be done.

As someone else pointed out it‘s a union type. Instead of person you could call it „entity“ and rewrite all the laws. Happy now?